A compassionate program designed to keep youngsters out of the criminal justice system was implemented five years ago in Broward County, Florida - the very county where 17 people died Feb. 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

The first year of the Trump administration saw remarkable accomplishments on both tax and regulatory relief, with fundamental tax reform for the first time in decades and the massive regulatory onslaught of the Obama years stopped and reversed. With wages rising and the economy strengthening, the most important priority for Congress in 2018 should be to lock in these historic accomplishments.

President Donald Trump tossed out some wacky nonsense about arming teachers, which encouraged the press and public to go nuts debating this ludicrous suggestion, totally ignoring commonsense remedies like banning civilians from purchasing weapons whose sole function is to kill the most people in the shortest time possible. The man is not as dumb as he looks, which at last count was considerable.

February is National Cancer Prevention Month, about 1.7 million people in the U.S. will be diagnosed with cancer in 2018, with 15,400 diagnoses in Kansas alone. While we have no cure to the disease, many of these cancer cases are preventable. Having been married to a physician for 34 years and gone to nursing school myself, I cannot stress enough how important it is to commit to a healthy lifestyle. Consider the big picture: by making time to exercise more, quitting smoking and eating better you have the power to reduce your risk of cancer.

In the aftermath of a horrific school shooting last week in Parkland, Florida, something at once sad, hopeful, and quintessentially American took shape after the tragedy: citizens, moved to action by a wrong they saw and experienced firsthand in their society, were catapulted onto the national stage as they decided to take action by demanding change from their elected lawmakers.

Hurricane Maria, which made landfall on September 20, 2017, devastated Puerto Rico, and has created a Catch-22. Puerto Ricans are fleeing the island in the thousands, bound mainly for Florida, New York and Illinois where family and friends will embrace them. For departing Puerto Ricans, this is a bittersweet time. Leaving their beloved island is hard but born of necessity. For many, everything was lost - about 500,000 houses, cars and all earthly possessions - a "catastrophic event," rarer than a disaster, according to University of Delaware sociology professor Tricia Wachtendorf, a catastrophe relief expert.

Then-candidate Trump's race for president was erratic and unfocused, bouncing from controversy to controversy and digging in on new arguments and issues every day. Yet throughout the cacophony, he had one line that always stayed consistent: Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, had committed a grave offense in her failure to properly manage classified information at the State Department.